Gay Belfast Holiday Feature: Denmark

With a hit TV show, an Oscar-winning film, the best restaurant in the world and covetable design, now is the time to discover all things Danish.

Put simply, the hunt for the killer of Nanna Birk Larsen rejigs everything you expect about snoozesome murdery-mystery TV. Over 20 dimly-lit, subtitled hours, The Killing [available on DVD from Amazon] plot simmers, startles and slowly unravels, as cops Sarah Lund and Jan Meyer pace Copenhagen's streets. They interview, re-interview, then thrice harangue witnesses, each time gleaning fresh "truths". We observe Nanna's mourners make mental headway with shock, anger, bargaining, depression. Lund's obsession with catching this grim, meticulous murderer, giving closure to Nanna's parents, becomes our obsession, too.

I love Lund; she's the sort of better woman I dream to be, shunting her love life, parenting-guilt and planned move to Sweden into the "Emotional crap to deal with" pile as she bids to change Denmark for the greater good. I love her grooming regime: hot water, nicotine replacement gum and an elastic band. I love her nifty skill in zoning out criticism, warnings and mind games, especially from her own nagging mum. Lund challenges the scary, gruff patriarchs of Copenhagen's politics and top-rank police, headbutting the truth until old alibis dissolve, fierce loyalties are disrupted and the most innocent faces give way to guilt. While British cop shows are festooned with screaming and snottering, Lund and Meyer deal aloofly with each triumph. Emotions run high, but rarely show on anybody's face. Each time the credits close, one is left with fewer hard facts and more befuddling questions. In a television age where tweet-along programming is king, The Killing requires good, old-fashioned "phone switched off" and "staring straight ahead" concentration. Oh, the irony. A TV show that no one can tweet about – or chat about for fear of "spoilers" – is so far one of 2011's biggest hits.

For a tiny country, Denmark often punches above its weight and that's certainly true for film. Not since Lars von Trier slapped audiences around the face with Breaking The Waves and his subsequent Dogme pranks (who could forget The Idiots, in which a bunch of Copenhagen suburbanites pretended to be mentally disabled?) has Danish cinema been so talked about.

Director Susanne Bier scooped this year's Oscar for best foreign language film with In A Better World, a compelling drama about two schoolboys choosing between pacifism and violence, while Janus Metz's war documentary, Armadillo, records life at a Danish-British base in Helmand. If there's one thing that unites these two most-hyped exports, it's their determination to scuff up Denmark's reputation as the "nicest" nation in Europe.

With a storyline that begins with playground bullying and takes in infidelity, bereavement, evil warlords and revenge, no one could accuse Bier of dodging the Big Issues. Her drama unfolds with a kind of relentless calm – huge African skies and flat Danish waters fill the screen even as the emotional screws tighten on the boys and their families. Bier has said the plot was engineered to question the cosy stereotype of her homeland as "an harmonious society" and a "blissful" place to live.

Minefields, real and ethical, also run through Metz's nonfiction work, which has shocked Denmark by showing its international "peacekeepers" as brutal killers. Armadillo has been compulsory viewing in that country – especially for the government, which has now set up an inquiry into the war crimes it may or may not portray.

After a long, demanding day of Machiavellian political manoeuvring in episode 12 of The Killing, prospective Copenhagen mayor Troels Hartmann rewards himself with a chill-cabinet pepperoni pizza. But if he really wanted to prove his commitment to his city, he'd be eating New Nordic. The food world's latest crush, the New Nordic culinary movement, was spearheaded by deeply photogenic young Danish chef René Redzepi. His restaurant, Noma, opened in Copenhagen in 2004 and the fact it now holds two Michelin stars and was last year voted into top spot in the San Pellegrino World's 50 Best Restaurants awards indicates he might be getting something right.

The philosophy behind his menus is "local, seasonal" – of course it is – but Redzepi takes a hardcore approach, refusing to cook with anything that doesn't come from his home region. So "nej, tak" to olive oil, garlic, tomatoes and foie gras, but "ja, hvorfor ikke" to largely foraged ingredients such as marsh violets, silver birch sap, bulrushes and, perhaps more challengingly, cod milt (sperm). There's no point in pretending this type of cooking isn't ludicrously ripe for parody, but it's also delicious and kind of thrilling.

Over here, fellow Dane Christoffer Hruskova, having started out at his first London restaurant, Fig, is continuing to riff on the New Nordic theme at his second place, North Road, applying Noma's zero-tolerance policy on olive oil and garlic, and its fondness for foraging and ancient cooking techniques (smoking, salting and pickling), to ingredients available in Britain.

Peek through the windows of any Danish home and chances are you'll see one or all of the following classics: Poul Henningsen's flying-saucer PH lamp, a Series 7 chair by Arne Jacobsen, a Bang & Olufsen TV and a set of Georg Jensen cutlery. Danes are rightly proud of their rich design heritage, in all its functional, well-crafted, minimalist glory, but the result is that almost every home looks the same. "We're such a small country," says Poul Madsen, chief executive of Normann Copenhagen, a well-known contemporary design company. "If a lamp or chair is even modestly successful, it means most people own it."

Such is the influence wielded by these masters, it can be hard for younger designers to find their own style. "These old guys from the 50s and 60s really put Denmark on the map, but designers often feel their weight a bit too much," Madsen says. Those who are most successful, says Peter Bonnén, founder of Muuto, another young design brand, take the functionality and craftmanship of Jacobsen et al and add a 21st-century twist. To get the Danish look, head to Skandium for the classics; Normann Copenhagen and Muuto for new designs; and 95percentdanish.com for everything else.

We've had to wait a while for female detective chic to move to the next level, but Sarah Lund's cream-and-black Scandi knit is the unsung star of TV drama The Killing and has, in one perfect knitwear coup de grace, ended the hitherto unassailable dominance of the DCI Jane Tennison skirt-suit and trench look.

Sofie Gråbøl, who plays Lund, has said the casting of the jumper is perfect because it shows that her character is at home with herself and isn't in thrall to the-woman-in-a-man's-world idea that forces many wardrobe departments to put female cops in suits. Well, there's that, and there's also the fact that the jumper just rocks. It looks lived-in but not grungy, slightly 70s but not embarrassingly retro, and is perfectly pitched at the Alexa Chung end of the nerdy spectrum. No wonder knitwear specialist Gudrun & Gudrun, which sells the jumper for €280, can barely keep up with demand. If you don't want to shell out on the original (spring is coming, so it's not the wisest moment to overspend on wool), there are still a lot of Fair Isle options on the high street. A man's in XS will give you that Lund look if you can't find the right one on the women's rails.

If the classic Scandi knit has given you a taste for the Danish look full stop, the labels to investigate are Day Birger et Mikkelsen for bohemian glamour, Múus by Malou Sander for simple leathers and Rützou for quietly chic dresses. Choose classic stuff – Malene Birger does the perfect blue shirt, Rützou has the loveliest simple pocket dress. Like Lund with her jumper, you'll never want to take them off.

Scandinavian crime fiction is no flash in the pan – in recent years barely a train in the country has reached its destination without several well-thumbed copies of Swedish bestsellers Henning Mankel or Stieg Larsson on board. Norwegian writer But what true enthusiasts know is that Denmark is where the real action is. While bleak, hypnotic thriller The Killing continues to enthral viewers on BBC4, Jo Nesbø's Oslo-set Harry Hole novels have been racing up the book charts both here and abroad, and this spring we are to be treated to Denmark's top crime writer, Jussi Adler-Olsen.

Mercy, the first in his "Department Q" trilogy, has spent more than a year on bestseller lists in both Denmark and Germany, and film rights have been snapped up by trilogy-fan Lars von Trier's production company. The novel sees troubled detective Carl Mørck setting up a department for unsolved cases. Or, as he sees it, "a home for hopeless cases". His first investigation is into the disappearance of a missing politician, presumed dead, but in fact imprisoned. It features all the hallmarks Scandi-book fans have come to adore – complicated politics laced with a frisson of sexual tension, a disenchanted detective and coffee-fuelled crime-solving. But what set apart this recent rash of Danish tales are their credible characters. Where the novels of Patricia Cornwell and TV shows such as CSI almost fetishise gore and material evidence, Mercy and its ilk focus on narrative, motive and a refreshing dollop of social commentary. While never shying away from the gruesome, the Danes are employing an age-old secret ingredient: gripping storytelling. Buy Mercy from Amazon now.

Apart from the psychedelic Hotel Fox, Copenhagen's trendiest hotels tend towards cosy rather than self-consciously cool. Try the seaside Skovshoved hotel – 20 minutes from the city centre – for wooden-floored, plump-pillowed bedrooms and private jetty. Or Nimb, with a Michelin-starred restaurant, "rustic" wine bar and antique-draped bedrooms with open fires and huge bathtubs. Design heads should make for the Radisson Blu Royal, created by Arne Jacobsen in 1960. Guests can loll in an Egg or Swan chair in the lobby, perch on a Series 7 chair at the bar, eat with "AJ" cutlery in the 20th-floor restaurant or check into room 606, featuring Jacobsen's original colour scheme, furniture and lighting.

For caffeinated gallery- and boutique-hopping, gritty-but-hip Vesterbro is the place, home to record and coffee shop Sort and art, craft and design emporium Designer Zoo. Or head for Copenhagen's shiniest fashion street, Kronprinsensgade. Swim with the locals at one of the pools suspended in the harbour or navigate the city's secret corners by kayak (try have recently launched new Urban Kayak tours that paddle, . offers a tour that paddles through small canals and harbours into Amsterdam-like houseboat villages and counter-culture . Too energetic? Recline on a cushion at Halvandet "beach bar" and enjoy Copenhagen's liquid assets.

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